You're absolutely right about the listening environment - it's a vital part of the interpretation and experience of any "ambient" music.
To appreciate it properly you have to actively "listen" to it. I find in general that John's music, and especially the 'instrumental' material that I prefer can't just be 'heard' and least of all not in fragments.
Except that I don't regard
A Secret Life as ambient music at all.
Are we listening to the same album??
For me, this is more of a complete piece than most of the other material John has released recently. It is absolutely bursting with memories, imprints, recollections -I have made notes that read "one of the most intensely personal albums Foxx has ever released" and "experimental and daring. Challenging, taking sonic risks with his own emotions". It's very sinister and confrontational too perhaps that's what is upsetting people?
Far from going nowhere, it took me on a journey through John's factory townscape, and dreams of escape. Fantasy and frustration. I found the themes and ideas expressed here quite threatening, and that is great to see because it gives the album genuine identity and uniqueness.
Unless I'm missing something, there's more Foxx in here than in anything since, well, since...
I'll come back to that, but I am disagreeing with the whole stark, empty simple thing I'm reading here.
It's rich with presence and melodrama, brilliantly composed.
One of John's least familiar releases, but isn't it good to see him still doing things differently and sending us a proper curveball now and then, lest we forget where he's coming from in our misconception that we've actually caught up with him.
Made sense to me, at least.